A water cannon being used by security personnel to disperse agitators during the 'Nabanna Abhijan' rally called by Paschim Banga Chhatra Samaj, a students' organisation, to protest against the alleged sexual assault and murder of a trainee doctor, on Tuesday, August 27, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: The ‘City of Joy’ on Tuesday witnessed a series of clashes between protesters and police during the ‘Nabanna Abhijan’, a march to the seat of the state government of West Bengal to demand justice for the young doctor who was recently raped and murdered at a hospital.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which extended support to the professedly ‘apolitical’ march to the state secretariat building, accused police of committing ‘atrocities’ on the protesters and called for a 12-hour shutdown across West Bengal on Wednesday.
The state’s Trinamool Congress government called upon people to foil the BJP’s plan to cripple the state. The state BJP heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and urged Governor C V Ananda Bose to recommend the imposition of President’s Rule in the state.
Nearly 6000 policemen were deployed to keep the protesters away from the state secretariat building in Howrah, a twin city of Kolkata on the other side of the river Hooghly.
They initially exercised restraint but resorted to lathi-charge, lobbed tear gas shells, and even used water cannons to disperse the mobs of protesters when they tried to breach the barricades erected at multiple places on all the roads leading to Nabanna.
At least 15 personnel of the Kolkata Police and 14 from the West Bengal Police were injured as the protesters hurled bottles and bricks at them during clashes on Mahatma Gandhi Road, at Hastings and Strand Road entry point to the Howrah Bridge in Kolkata as well as on Foreshore Road and Kona Expressway and at Howrah Maidan and Santragachi Station complex in Howrah.
Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the state’s Legislative Assembly, claimed that at least 160 protestors, including 17 women, suffered injuries due to police brutality.
Altogether 220 persons were arrested, 126 by Kolkata Police and 94 by West Bengal Police.
The BJP state president and Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar led a march by the party’s leaders and workers to the police headquarters later in the evening on Tuesday, protesting police crackdown on the agitators. They were, however, stopped before they could reach the police headquarters.
Banerjee’s chief advisor Alapan Bandopadhyay said that police had exercised utmost restraint on Tuesday. He also said that the state government had decided to oppose the shutdown and take all measures to prevent any disruption in life, to ensure schools and colleges function normally, and to avoid any interruption in commercial activities.
All government buses would operate normally. The state government would compensate for any loss or damage caused to any private commercial vehicle during the shutdown on Wednesday, he said.
“There would be no bandh in West Bengal tomorrow”, TMC senior leader Kunal Ghosh said.
The professedly “apolitical” Nabanna Abhiyan was called by the newly floated “Paschim Banger Chhatra Samaj (Community of Students of West Bengal)”.
The BJP, however, had extended support to the protest march, and several of its leaders were seen on the streets, albeit without the party’s flag. The Trinamool Congress, however, cited the links of the organisers with the Sangh Parivar to allege that the BJP was playing a behind-the-scenes role in orchestrating the march to Nabanna.
Twenty-five people, including four main organisers, were arrested from across the state late on Monday as a preventive measure.
“We have credible proof that the miscreants were planning to use firearms and bombs during the march. The situation could have turned much worse if these preventive arrests were not made,” Supratim Sarkar, Additional Director General of Police (South Bengal), said.
The police and ruling TMC alleged that a conspiracy to provoke police to use force and get people killed during the march had been hatched to trigger unrest and destabilise the State Government.
The rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata triggered outrage not only across West Bengal but beyond the state too.
The Kolkata Police arrested a man for raping and murdering the 31-year-old just a day after her body was found.
The Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe both into the rape and murder of the doctor and the allegations of corruption and irregularities at the RGKMCH. But the colleagues of the deceased doctors, civil society activists, and several other organisations as well as the opposition BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxists) continued the protests across the state.
The TMC too demanded an expeditious probe by the CBI and accused the BJP and the CPI(M) of trying to reap political dividends from the outrage over the crime.